a s w o l l e n b r u i s e

     That morning was covered in a thick layer of nearly opaque ice. The clouds hung heavy, almost dripping smokey blue. Everything lay still, silent, and bitterly cold. I could feel the weight press up against my window, adding to the weighted tension on my head. I felt entirely consumed by the pressure fixed resolutely on my forehead. The familiar throb sank into my mind, and for a brief moment, I drifted easily along the pain. The darkness in the sky stayed steadily in place, a melted blanket of gray and blue. Half asleep, I ran my torn fingers across my swollen forehead. I had been awake for hours, but I could have been asleep. It didn't really matter much to me.
       It might have been eleven o'clock, and I was still in bed. My new safety, it bathed me in warmth and a forgiving aura of complacency. The gray light spilled across my room, creating hollow shadows along my walls. My parents' voices grazed my consciousness, lifting me farther back into the coldness. Words shot up from the faded echoes, and I struggled to hold back the paranoia swamping me. I knew they were discussing me. I absent mindedly stroked my forehead and tightened my body, tangled in the blankets. I could heard someone closing in on my door and I let my body go limp, suggesting I was once again lost in sleep.
       "Andrea?" I remained immobile, letting my skin shrink into the warmth. "It's a quarter to twelve..." My mother's voice drifted off into a sigh. I could feel her eyes on me, staring deep into my warmth.
       For a moment, I almost felt guilty.
       The door shut and I heard a faint murmur outside my room. I was tempted to raise my hands to my ears, but I didn't want to move. I wanted to stay in bed all day, falling in and out of dreams. I didn't want to stay awake thinking and lying. All I wanted now was sleep.
        It had occurred to me a few weeks back in math class how pointless I was. Suddenly, the only the thing that made any sense was hiding. The moment my body was flung into sleep, my mind was free. I had no idea why people feared dying-- If death was an eternal sleep, I had no reason to dread it.
       Nothing made me happy anymore.
       Death is a perverse thing to think about. And as much as my heart filled with the pleasure of no longer existing, another thought plagued my weary mind. It was just like an average teen to contemplate god, the meaning of life, and suicide at one sitting. Squeezing my eyes closed, I kicked around the degrading knowledge in my mind. I was average. Nothing but more but your run of the mill sixteen year old girl. I wore tight sweaters, read famous books, and tried to impress the pants off of older guys. I begged for people to tell me I was different, I was special, I was Andrea. But I knew, deep down inside, I was just another pale body of flesh, and I held nothing more than emptiness. Why was so much making me miserable, when I found no reason to do anything in first place? My closest friend was a lone fact.
       I am going to die.
       It didn't matter what I did or if I succeeded. I could never escape from the fact that I am only mortal. I do not matter. I whispered this over and over again, my heart racing. Curled up in bed, a smallish girl sobbed over the realization of nothing. I didn't understand why so many guidelines were set, all of them leaving me alone and afraid. Somehow, in the mix up of the universe, I existed for a brief moment. That frozen day was just one of many that would pass. Every single thought I ever had would be wiped clean once I fell into my eternal sleep. My childhood fantasy of becoming famous seemed pointless. The people that worship success will die, too. My fragile universe will gently implode, and all will be lost. Every thought, every book, every little piece of me will be gone. It never happened. This, my lightly worded solace, will disappear. I will once never write this. Every way you look at it, you lose. Importance is bullshit. Knowledge... power... success... nothing, in the end. For my short time existing, I wished for but one thing. I wanted to be happy. I wanted to be satisfied, I wanted to be left alone. I wanted to stop suffering through high school, stop trying to please my parents, stop everything but the few things that didn't make me cry. If these fleeting years were all I had, why were they attached to so much remorse?
       God, I'm a selfish person, I thought. A moment later I laughed bitterly. I don't believe in god. I smiled through hot tears, then let another heavy sob rake my tired body. Although I was soaked in sweat, I clutched my shivering body, attempting to regain composure. The world pressed down on me, a struggling Atlas. Sitting up, dizzy, I choked on another heavy flood of pity. These morbid thoughts skimmed around my mind, and I grimaced. I was so tired.
        Exactly two months ago I had finally broken down. It had started with a messy fight with my mother about grades, and nothing quickly surged into a full out war against myself. That night, December ninth, I tore my insides, aching. And it stayed with me. I could vividly recall myself lying broken on the floor, gasping for air, struggling for control, clutching the phone, realizing that I had no one to call. It was nearly midnight, and I had completely collapsed. Everything smashed up against me, forcing me to breath my own stale air. So much pain flowing in through scattered thoughts, directly into my forehead. I was lead back to my eight year old mode of dealing with my emotions. Jesus, I had never felt so much pain. I laid shivering, sweating, moaning on the floor, letting my ears ring and my vision unfocus and refocus on blackness. I had never been so scared. I truly wanted to die. Not just thinking about it, but actually willing myself to hit myself harder, making it last, making it desecrate my mind. How fitting that my forehead is swollen.
       Writhing, I was actually writhing. I had picked up the phone from the floor, and pitifully lay on my stomach, searching for a friend's number. Let him hurl some sense into me, I had thought to myself. That was all I wanted. An emotional blow to stop the physical pain. At the sound of his voice i just shamefully sobbed. I had sat, bowed onto my knees, racked with sobs for about twenty minutes. And he told me I needed help. But I refused. I'm just an ordinary girl wrapped up in my big game of nothing, I pleaded. But nothing had been coherent through my weeping. I demanded to know why I had to live. Because at that precise moment, all meaning was lost.
       When I die, I will float into a dark void of nothing. Everything I do with my life will ultimately bare no importance on the past or the future. If i knew this, but still found life pleasing, it wouldn't hurt so much. But knowing that I was miserable... it made me want to die then and there. I took this all out on my aching brow. If you looked closely you could see it. A faint bluish tint on top of a swollen bruise. But I couldn't stop. And it sickened me.